There were sailing-ships, with stewards and mahogany and maple
saloons, trading to Australia, taking cargoes of consumptives and
hopeless drunkards for whom a sea-voyage was recommended; there were
frowzy little West African boats, full of rats and cockroaches,
where men died anywhere but in their bunks; there were Brazilian
boats whose cabins could be hired for merchandise, that went out
loaded nearly awash; there were Zanzibar and Mauritius steamers and
wonderful reconstructed boats that plied to the other tide of Borneo.
These were loved and known, for they earned our bread and a little
butter, and we despised the big Atlantic boats, and made fun of the
P. & O. and Orient liners, and swore by our respective owners -
Wesleyan, Baptist, or Presbyterian, as the case might be.
I had only just come back to England when Mrs. McPhee invited me to
dinner at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the notepaper was
almost bridal in its scented creaminess. When I reached the house
I saw that there were new curtains in the window that must have cost
forty-five shillings a pair; and as Mrs. McPhee drew me into the
little marble-papered hall, she looked at me keenly, and cried:
"Have ye not heard? What d' ye think o' the hatrack?"
Now, that hat-rack was oak-thirty shillings, at least.
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